A laser head is a device comprising essentially an active laser material and means for exciting the material. A laser head amplifies a laser beam passing through its active material, and if a resonant optical cavity is disposed around the active material, the assembly becomes a laser generator.
A known amplifying laser head comprises active material in the form of a neodymium-doped glass rod and excitation means in the form of light discharge tubes disposed around the rod. When a high energy laser beam is to be amplified by the rod it is necessary for the rod to have a large cross-sectional area. This results in un-even excitation of the rod by the discharge tubes. The axial zone of the rod is less illuminated and its degree population inversion is less than that of the peripheral zone.
The present invention aims to mitigate this drawback and provide a high power laser structure in which the active material is more evenly excited.